Perry Smith Murderer

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night of the iguana

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964)

This is the sad story of poor Reverend Bird—lover of Lorna Anderson and Lutheran has-been Man of the Lord. 

After serving time in the Big House and being snubbed by Lorna, his lovely former sweetheart—Reverend Bird like Richard Burton escaped to Mexico to lick his wounds and recuperate his shattered health.
________________________

“I thought it was just a nightmare—but then I woke up and it was all horribly true. I used to be a fine law-abiding Lutheran minister—preaching the Lord’s word in lovely little small town Emporia, Kansas”

“Kansas had been good to me—my wife, my kids, my congregation who believed every fucking word I said to them from up there on the lofty pulpit. Then, the next thing I knew I ended up in prison for murdering my lovely wife—accused of slugging her over the head with a cheap bottle Jacques Bonet champagne.”

“I dumped my wife’s body over the railing of the rickety old steel-cable and wood-plank Rocky Ford gCottonwood Bridge. Down she went along with the family car—into the churning, murky, muddy depths of murder and shame.” 

“I couldn’t wait to get rid of her—she’d become just another crummy cross to bear. It looked like an accident—I thanked God for giving me the courage to off her to further my bright career in the Lutheran ministry.”

“Of course, both Lorna and I got caught in our evil adulterous hanky-panky skullduggery. We both ended up in prison—after two trials and lots of local cover-ups. Small town politics, murder-for-hire, lots of accomplices and greed."

"Emporia turned out to be just another sex-driven, obsessed Peyton Place in Fly Over State disguise. It was simply just awfully tacky and scandalous for everybody." 

"Especially all the local church-going small town religious folk. Completely devastating their faith and beliefs in the Republican Right Wing Party and the stoic gothic Conservative Religious Right. Many Lutheran parishioners—switched over to being staunch Atheists."

"Anyway, after I served my time—I fled down to Mexico like Richard Burton exiled from his church to be a tour bus guide to visiting little old lady school teachers from the States."

"It was then that my Bad Karma struck me a blow—that I never recuperated from. That’s how I ended up in Ava Gardner’s seedy Mexican tourist dive—a run-down ruined old hacienda stuck out in the wilds of the dark mysterious Mexican jungle."

"That’s how I ended up all tied-and-bundled-up—neat as a bed-bug in an outdoor hammock hanging and dangling trying to sober up from a week long drunk. Ava played her guitar—soothing me with her deep throaty sexy voice." 

"That’s when I felt it stirring and slithering—down there between my legs. Surely it was the wrath of God and the anger of Martin Luther. My adulterous sinful fucking around with Lorna Anderson—was finally catching up with me."

"It was moiling around and writhing down there between my skinny, scrawny legs. The Night of the Iguana had come back to haunt me—for all my stupid “Murder Ordained” crimes against Gawd and Humanity."

"The biggest crime of all—the crime against the Institution of Marriage soiled and stained by my sinful sexual urges. Mother Nature was seeking its revenge on me—in a most horrible insidious way."

"I couldn’t believe it—my troublesome male organ had turned into a huge grotesque ugly icky Iguana!!! It was growing bigger and bigger—so all-consuming and primitive that it was taking over my so-called life."

"A slithering scaly huge horrible Iguana—was growing down the side of my leg. It was growing larger and larger—there was no end in sight. Mother Nature’s revenge on me—Bad Karma for my various and sundry fucking Lorna and all those other Emporia fornifications with the ladies in the choir in the backroom."

"Pretty soon it was as big as a Python, then a huge Boa Constrictor!!! There I was tied up in a hammock—to protect Ava and all the little old school ladies from being raped. It wasn’t very pretty—Ava sang songs and tried to soothe me."

"Ava’s Mexican kept boys started at it—ogling at the Americano’s huge coiling and uncoiling big Iguana dick. It even had a pink forked-tongue—darting in and out of the slit." 

"The two Mexican boys started sizing me up—wondering how I’d taste barbecued with hot sauce and chili. Surely such a huge meaty gringo Tool—an Iguana lizard prick of such gigantic proportions. Would make a delicious fiesta meal!!!"

"My huge Iguana Schlong would surely make them more manly and muy macho—more adorable, more potent and sought after by all the Mexican girls back in the village. It was only a matter of time…"

the monolith monsters

The Monolith Monsters (1957)

The curse of the Monolith Monsters—came back to haunt all the respectable, law-abiding people of lovely little Fly-Over-State Emporia, Kansas.

What else to call them—these weird Easter Island stone monstrosities west of town? There they were—gaunt, gothic, stark hunks of limestone. 

This Stonehenge primitive cluster of over-sized, gigantic, old limestone Fenceposts—the brainless creation of the mad artist Richard Stauffer of ESU and ESU fame.

Conceived in his glass-blowing studio-laboratory—
up by Wilson Park overlooking the old Welch Football Stadium. He been a crazed Frankenstein madman—since he fell down a ladder while remodeling his basement with local stonemasonry. 

He broke both his arms in the fall—and badly bruised his poor sculptor’s creative brain. After that he switched mysteriously to junk art sculpture—prowling junkyards around town for thrown-away car parts and useless tired machinery. 

Later he switched to glass blowing art—making nice shiny beautiful pieces of art out of lovely tinted glass for people to enjoy. 

But then his obsession with stone sculpture and giant size-queen stone masonry—got him a sizable grant to build the Monolith Monsters.

He’s always been rather historically inclined—hunting for Indian flint arrowheads and tribal artifacts. No wonder he ended up dedicating the Monoliths to the Indians, settlers, even William Allen White. 

Up they went like stony obscene gauche Erections—west of Emporia by the Lyon County Fairgrounds. Driving into town along Highway 50 from the Interstate—there they were glaring and scaring all the tourists and visitors.

Was it any wonder that this weird coffee-klatch of ugly giant statues—seemed cursed from another world like the Paleozoic Mosasaurs out past Strong City. The tall grass prairie covering—what was once a vast primitive Inland Sea from the Gulf up to Canada.

And so whether it was an old Indian Curse or prehistoric monsters returning from the deeps—the ugly gargoyle stone hunks started to grow and grow and get much bigger day by day.

Looming higher and higher like giant phallic Erections—horrible Kansas hard-ons totally disgusting for people driving by.

These Monolith Monsters stomped the Fairgrounds completely flat—then they headed east along Hwy 50. All the way downtown along Sixth Avenue—wrecking havoc with all the businesses, gas stations, homes and churches. 

Wherever they went—the Monolith Monsters destroyed and crushed every thing in sight. Flattening the banks, the courthouse—the old Newman’s Department Store (already a ruin).

Nothing was sacred to the Monsters—the Granada Theater and even the sturdy Presbyterian Church built like a fucking brick outhouse.

All the way up to the Sunken Garden and the pretty little college campus—pretty soon nothing was left but a town that looked like the spitting-image of the destitute ruins of ugly Detroit.

The Monolith Monsters had taken over—the pretty little modest comfy Athens of the Midwest. Speculation and rumors were rife across the devastated wreckage of a town—people blaming Hostess Twinkies and Tyson Meat Packing greed for their tacky downfall.

Others blamed Lorna Anderson and that awful Reverend Bird—for the wrath of the Lutheran Lord descending on their doomed town. 

The good thing about this horrible Kansas disaster—was that word got around on TV and the Media about the cataclysmic sinking of Emporia just like the grand ocean liner The Titanic.

The only standing building untouched—was the old EHS neo-classical high school there on Sixth. It had been remodeled and renamed The Breckinridge Hotel and Convention Center.

All of sudden the Breckinridge Hotel got flooded with out-of-town inquisitive visitors and gawking shocked tourists out for a cheap thrill. 

The Breckinridge was packed with wealthy people—from across the vast country. Suddenly The Flyover State was bigtime lucrative business—Mayor Bobbi Mlynar declared a Kansas Sunflower State National Holiday—filling the city commission’s coffers with oodles and oodles of Tourist Money and even lucrative Hollywood movie contracts.

Which only goes to show you, Dorothy. There’s always a Pot of Gold—at the terrible, tortuous, troubled, tacky End of the Rainbow, honey!!!!!!

Obit Lit

ROBERTS-BLUE-BARNETT
YOU-SLAY’EM-WE-LAY’EM 
FUNERAL HOME

“First you dream—
then you die”
—Cornell Woolrich

Denise Thanatogenos spoke the Tongue of Emporia so very fluently & eloquently, my dears—

So exquisitely so that her elegant rather tacky Prairie Twang beguiled even the most innocent passengers sitting next to her in her jet plane journey high above the dreary plains...

As they were having cocktails flying high over the lovely Fly Over State of Kansas far down below.

Yes, lovely Kansas the Fly Over State…

Way down there—miles and miles far below.

Kansas more a sullen moody pouting state of mind than a mere state of the union.

After all, who’d wanna live down there anyway—moiling about hopelessly amidst all those disgusting Red State Repulsive Right Wing Ratty Republicans?

Down there in that Kansas churning drought Dust Bowl Hellhole—with its simply atrocious Tacky Tornadoes, Stifling Heat and Abject Poverty?

Ratting around down there in all that simply hideous New Depression poverty and abject obsequious Hostess Twinkie Squalor? 

It was bad enough that Denise Thanatogenos had been born way down there—in that sullen Fly Over Sunflower State…

Acquiring its typical all-too-familiar ignorant Midwestern nasal twang—having been dumped there at birth like Dorothy’s shabby farmhouse rudely and unceremoniously plopped down there in that dismal despicable Kansas shithole

After that simply awful Wizard of Oz tumultuous Wizard of Oz Thirties misadventure?

And let me assure you, honey, beyond any doubt,  after it’s all been said and done—that there is absolutely no wonderful beautiful Treasure at the End of the Fucking Rainbow down there either. 

The Emporia Guzzlette

Let’s skip the police reports—and all that. Let’s just say that Denise Thanatogenos acquired her popular personality at Emporia High School and easy lay at the College of Despicablehood Emporia (now defunct) way back when.

Yes, Denise Thanatogenos presented herself to the hot young C of E collegiate men from back East— tres stylishly coiffeured in the latest dark lace negligees and nightgowns displayed in the Newman’s Department Store and Poole’s windows. 

But her true spirit was somewhere else—it came from whiffs of decadence from the rotting Orchards of the Hesperidins. There in the decadent vice-ridden local taverns and bars—emanating country music into the night.

An invisible umbilical cord of small town shady taverns (drinking and pimping) reached out to her—seducing Denise with the same seductive Siren calls from the local white trash bars of Emporia that had lured her mother into sheer and utter down-and-out Hank Williams country boy tragic romance.

As Denise grew up the only language of the heart she got to know in Emporia—was the honky-tonk Saturday Night blues of Hank Williams singing all those melancholy country music laments late at night. After all, wasn't that’s what dreary-deary Kansas was known for?

Songs like “Your Cheatin’ Heart”—Denise’s favorite Hank Williams country music song on the jukebox back then. It didn’t take long, my dears, for her to realize that cheatin’ hearts ruled the world......

Future Farmers of America

It was Denise’s exposure to country boy romance—that almost did her in. Those cheatin’ hearts of cute FFA boys did her in every time—getting them off in Chevy pick-ups out under the Kansas stars. Country music on the radio—naked in the pickup. 

They claimed they loved her—but afterwards they dumped her. Once they got what they wanted—Denise only wanted some more. It was slam, bam, thank you man—but sometimes she got seconds.

The same with greasy ducktails—slim blue jean hips and tawdry Elvis the Pelvis goodlooking guys. She was obsessed with them—but they treated her like a piece of cheap trailer trash after a quickie.

Not that she blamed them—in fact she liked it when they treated her like trash. She was just like pretty red-headed Mommy Dearest—the live wire of the VFW on Saturday nights.

RFD Romance

Moody RFD boys of town—they hung around back then at The Ship’s Lounge. Down south of the tracks—in the Mexican part of town. Next to Reeble’s Memorial Tombstone Joint—with all that fine mortuary statuary littering the front lawn on display.

Across the street the garish red brick façade—of the ancient Reeble’s Grocery Store. Now a physical fitness center—but its stark gothic Kansas architecture back then stuck out like a rough-trade reminder of what it must have been like when Emporia was just a primitive Cowtown down there by the Santa Fe tracks.

The men, the gone now WWII and Korean War crowd—drank their sorrows away after work at The Ship’s Lounge. Many of them divorced and lonely—dead beat dads with nothing else to do. 

Drinking late with their buddies—suitably somber and depressed by the approaching grim Gothic Americana Grim Reaper. The Olpe boys were there—and some FFA farmboy types.

Denise preferred the Ship’s Lounge—to the watering holes up by campus. The college and frat boys were still so young and naïve—they weren’t so tombstone obsessed like south of the tracks. 

Denise dredged the bottom of the barrel—she ignored the guys from Kansas City who went to KSTC—she preferred the more experienced and knowing local RFD desperadoes. 

Denise preferred the tall moody lanky ones—the young petulant Olpe loners who shied away from everybody at school. 

The Strong City studs who made her wanna gag. They were the ones that always fought it—but when they did let go it was something else. 

There was this country boy hard-to-get pent-up insouciance—it was so awfully heartbreakingly exquisite when they banged their heads against the gun-rack.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 

“there was this graveyard just 
outside Los Angeles, which for
sheer exquisite sensitive beauty
surpassed anything she had
seen of that kind”—Evelyn Waugh 
The Loved One

I was visiting Maplewood Cemetery just outside of Emporia. There I was having lunch in the graveyard sitting next to a giant erect granite monstrosity dedicated to some wealthy powerful forgotten Emporia personage.

Maplewood Cemetery is by no means a swanky Forest Lawn Cemetery like the one in Los Angeles. As far as I knew, no famous movie stars were buried there in that grim flat gravel-road lined Maplewood Necropolis of Emporia. 

I was just finishing my ham on rye sandwich and a tall cool one—when like in that opening scene in George Romero’s classic horror movie, “Night of the Living Dead,” something very strange happened to me. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw somebody or something shambling its way through the maze of tombstones like some inebriated, much-too-drunk person out for a stroll. I shrugged it off as some poor mourner suffering from a broken heart for a dearly departed dead Loved One. 

Little did I know that it wasn’t a mourning visitor but rather one of the actual dead Loved Ones themselves. Because as the drunk interloper interrupting my lunch got closer and closer—I could see that he was in a state of rotten decay and stinking decrepitude like somebody just having been exhumed from the grave.

I tried hiding behind the giant ornate granite edifice standing next to me—but the dead Loved One already had my number. I was fresh meat on the hoof and a meaty din-din on a plate as far at the dead Loved One was concerned.  

Somewhere along the shambling way the Loved One had shed its false teeth and the mere thought of being gummed to death by a dead man was simply too revolting for me to even think about for even one little second. 

The smell of the dead Loved One downwind was enough to gag a maggot, so to speak, and I could actually see busy moiling maggots wiggling away in the guy’s empty eye-sockets as he got closer. How the fuck could the dead man see without eyes, I asked myself desperately. He could smell me…

I was starting to get much too overly excited by the whole sick scene. My car was parked a short way over there by the Columbarium. And here I was starting to be stalked by a piece of Gothic Americana that didn’t know it was dead. Somehow it had uprooted itself from its grave six feet under and was laying its doom routine on me. Why?

Were the ancestral Kansas spirits displeased with me for some reason? Was it a sacrilege to have lunch in a cemetery in Emporia? The Loved Ones had come back like the Living Dead to enjoy the spoils of being alive again? Had something happened I didn’t know about—a Mayan Zombie Apocalypse or something? Or was it a tacky Memento mori reminder that all was not well for me—that I was doomed?

I got back to my car and rolled up the windows. I locked the doors and turned on the radio. A satellite had fallen to the earth into the Tyson meat packing plant—and contaminated with alien microbes and some kind of radiation all of Emporia. A deadly disease had been let loose—a plague of the most horrible dimensions.

Instead of killing people—it raised dead people from the dead. It was a reverse Memento mori situation in which the dead Loved Ones somehow remembered being alive and were being resurrected by some kind of death-defying virus with an evil dark mission—to destroy the stupid living human beings—and return the dead Loved Ones back to power again.

I was safe in my car—thank goodness it wasn’t a convertible. But then I couldn’t find my keys. I must have dropped them in my haste to get my ass outta there. So what could I do but just sit there—waiting for the Living Dead creature to shamble its way to get me. My cellphone went dead. What bad luck.

Then the living dead Loved One Creep found my car. He leaned toward me and leered through the window. He was literally falling apart right before my eyes. One side of his ugly puss was already sliding down the side of his face—oozing its way toward the gravel roadway. He pawed the window desperately trying to get in.

I called him “Mr. Joyboy” because of the grim gothic grotesque death-grin on his stupid decrepit decaying face. He was leering at me and trying to gum me to death through the window that’s for sure. It was simply awfully pitiful but still horrible and disgusting at the same time. 

There was No Escape from Maplewood Cemetery!!! I was stuck and it was beginning to get dark. I felt utterly violated and profaned—like poor innocent Aimee Thanatogenos in “The Loved One” (1965). Ending up in the foul perverted clutches of “Whispering Glades” Jonathan Winters—playing the jaded sex-crazed Reverend Wilbur Glenworthy. 

Not that “Joyboy” was capable of getting any kind of  obscene “boner” to violate and ravish me with—but rather the dead Loved One was slowly turning into a pile of old bones right before my eyes. 

I was no lover of Mother Nature—not if she could come up with such a horrible thing as a Living Dead Loved One like him. Even if that Living Dead thing had once been a living breathing breeding dearly beloved Emporia denizen from way back whenever. 

Now is what counted—and it wasn’t very pretty being pawed at through my window by whatever it was. These newly resurrected Living Dead Loved Ones were surely aesthetically and spiritually the ugliest things in the world—obscene disgusting weird foreigners from some other dehumanized and lost Dead Land. 

Wherever they came from—they were hungry and starved carnivores and blood-thirsty man-eaters who craved living meat. And I was definitely on the menu.

Could it be that these Living Dead creatures—were the result and manifestation of modern day’s various sinful perversions and decadent culture? That we’d frustrated the processes of nature—and queered the human existence as we once knew it on Earth?

The perversion of man had infected death itself—so that we’d ended up de-evolutionarily degraded and shamelessly “all too human” for our own good?  We were suffering from complete and utter spiritual bankruptcy—as well as horrible degrading aesthetic poverty?

The Living had always enjoyed a certain vicarious intimacy with death by ignoring it—the kind of thing to be expected in the world as we know it today.

We’d removed ourselves from any sense of physical death—by using Funeral Parlor words like “inhumement, entombment, inurnment, immurement and insarcophasgusment.” 

Forest Lawn, Maplewood Cemetery and Whispering Glades—had become places for happy deceased Loved Ones sleeping comfortably away in waterproof bronze and steel coffins. With TV remote cameras installed—to catch the still life-like smiles of the now dead Loved Ones on Xmas and holidays.

But there was also a monstrous Living Dead Thing—lurking somewhere among the marble draperies and quartered escutcheons of the tombs…….

And then I realized it was me—I was the one waiting in the wings. Waiting for the inevitable Maplewood, Forest Lawn, Whispering Glade denouement of what I was, what I’d been and what I’d never ever be again.

Here I was trapped in my beat-up dreary old Camero—by nightfall I was now surrounded by dozens of dearly Beloved Dead Zombies pawing at my car to get a taste of me.

Most of them were old withering retirees and retired burnt-out denizens of Emporia. Especially the old Living Dead widows who’d lived to be 100—and could barely hobble down through the graveyard paths. 

“But wait!” I said to myself finally. 

“Why should I wait and postpone the inevitable dearly beloved Loved One Ending any longer?” 

“Why wait until I’m old and withered and so decrepit that I can’t have fun stalking the Living and freaking them out? All those stupid Human Beings still alive?”

So I unlocked the car door and they dragged me out. Pretty soon they’d gummed me to death pretty good—so that I too was now one of the Living Dead. 

It wasn’t so bad after all—I had the whole night to be have fun and stalk the streets of Emporia. I knew just the ones I wanted to eat—just the right succulent ones that knew their time was up. Sensing they were mine. 

All mine—to have, too hold and to hungrily eat like a nice tasty juicy filet mignon!!!

Murder Ordained (1987)

MURDER ORDAINED

“I experienced the authentic
appetite of a writer on the track
of a story. I have attributed
that rare elation to the hero
of the book, making him in
the process a poet instead 
of a novelist.”—Evelyn Waugh
The Loved One
___________________

Pastiche and coincidence—the story of my life
After all, I was born & raised in The Waste Land

The grim gothic gruesome Fly Over State—
That vast Nothingness between LA and NYC

Don’t look back is a pretty good philosophy—
But don’t look down on Kansas far below either

Because what you see is what you get—
And the getting, my dear, just isn’t worth it
___________________

I’m not as gloomy as Eliot or Evelyn Waugh—
The Midwest is Entertainment Tonight for me

All those sad extravagantly Gothic facades—
Those flat nasally Plains twangs and drawls

I treat them all as frivolous, gaily cockeyed—
Burlesques and riotous harlequinades

When confronted with such tragic people—
I try to restrain myself from being too trashy
_________________________

Grant Wood irony sometimes works best—
Dealing with bigoted, rancorous Kansas creeps

The Bright Young People all flee Emporia—
Seeking gay insouciance in LA and NYC

Leaving behind all the Vile Bodies condemned—
To dance their giddy dance on condemned ground

Kansas with its Red State picturesque ignorance—
And enduring barbaric Old Testament Christianity
_____________________

Tom Brown’s Body continually rising from its grave—
Stirring up wily Repug promoters, big and small

The limitless efficiency of a Wal Mart mentality—
Twinkies, Iowa Beef and Tyson disillusionment

The Movers and Shakers of Cowtown Emporia—
Desperately tried it all for the Big Time Show

Now the Somali and Hispanic illegal aliens have—
All fled leaving bankruptcy, greedy bigots adrift
_______________________

All the hopes for some kind of fiscal relief—
Focused on the dingbat little teachers college

Hoping that student tuition and outside money—
Will somehow save Emporia from downfall

Meanwhile on the trusty religious front—
A coruscating tour de force of Old Time Religion:

“Murder Ordained” (1987) a romantic evocation—
Vanished splendors and Bird Bridge romances
_____________________

The intoxicating pleasures of Lutheran sex and—
Small town gangbanging in the church backroom

The discovery of this dismal adulterous world—
By the blind innocent church-going Emporians

Simply devastating the whole community—
Its shamelessly dirty linen a made for TV movie

Lorna Anderson’s unhappy marriage matched—
Only by Reverend Bird’s savage night outing
______________________

Slugging his wife on the head with a bottle of—
Cheap Jacques Bonet champagne and then

Dumping her over the bridge railing and driving—
Her car down into the muddy Cottonwood River

Lorna not much better murdering her husband—
On the side of the road one dark highway night

Unhappy marriages and illicit love affairs—
Are nothing new to this awful old Wicked World
______________________

But Lorna and Reverend Bird did it with Style—
Murdering their spouses for insurance money

Poor Emporia got overripe and ran riot—
Making Peyton Place blush with embarrassment

The Local People Who Be hushing it all up—
Especially the horny bankers and politicians

The Emporia Gazette could spill the beans—
Just ask the Mayor Bobbi Mlynar who knows

YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hubUNqQLjN8 

1

Love is hard to get—
But cheatin’ hearts are easy

Being queer in Kansas—
Ain’t exactly a piece of cake

It was pretty much rough trade—
And you know what that means

You pay for it with heartache—
And then they roll you

2

I was like Mommy Dearest—
She was just a country girl

She divorced her first husband—
A quickie shot gun marriage

Yeah, cause of guess who—
Yours truly, honey

After that, of course—
Cheatin’ hearts tell on you

3

Mother’s advice to me—
About being gay was

Be tactful, honey—
They’re ignorant boys

They’ll break your heart—
If you let them

Olpe boyz especially—
They’re inscrutable

4

I used to sit—
There in the VFW

Listening with mother—
To Hank Williams sing

“Your Cheatin Heart”—
Her favorite song

Cause it happened—
So many times

The Reunion

THE REUNION
—for John Evans
________________________


THE FACE LIFT

“For Heaven’s Sake, honey,” I said—
“It was just simply horrible!”

"Your Poor Miss Thing was such a wreck—
I'll never ever be the same again!!!"

“Get a hold of yourself, Miss Thing”—
John said, trying to be reassuring

But I’d always been the nelly type—
Easily offended even way back then

When we were going thru that insufferably—
Boring bourgeois BLOW JOB High School 

All the way back there in the Sticks—
Schmucking around in stupid Schmuckville

"I’d been looking forward to it—
So very much to our lovely Reunion"

“I feel like reading my own beads,” I said—
"What did I expect, SHANGRI-LA?"

"I even had a Face Lift especially—
Done for our grand Fiftieth Reunion!!!"

"By an expensive fag undertaker—
Specializing in cosmetic surgery"

"At this swanky Palm Springs—
Eternal Sunshine Funeral Parlor"

"With a popular Disco and Casino—
Down there in the basement"

“You Slay ‘Em, We Lay ‘Em”—
Was the motto of Stiffs Mortuary

"I was like Norma Desmond rotting away—
There on lonely Sunset Boulevard"

"I felt like some useless old drag queen—
What did I expect from the Reunion?

THE SCREAM

“What a waste of money!”—
I whined away on the phone

“I blew $100,000 for a Stupid—
Face Lift and some lousy Wrinkle Crème”

“Only to be totally ignored, my dear—
At that fruitless Fiftieth Reunion!”

"I'd simply given up, of course—
A Miss Thing so tres distraught"

"I’d hired a driver to the dreary affair—
In a rental “Jacqueline” Lincoln limousine"

"A swank luxurious Land Cruiser, my dear—
Built like the fucking Queen Elizabeth"

"To impress all my tacky classmates—
With how awfully successful I'd become"

“I should have taken a jet, honey—
That way I could have just kept...”

“Flying over the whole stupid lousy—
Stinking State of Kansas, my dear” 

“After all, isn't that why it's like— 
Called The Fucking Flyover State?”

HORROR SHOW

So I did my Miss Thing Rant—
Complaining about my Ratty Reunion

The Encounter with Wrinkle City—
Right outta Miss Evelyn Waugh 

All that “The Dear One” Kitsch—
The Kansas funeral parlor racket

Denizens of the Death Business—
The epitome of American capitalism

With Rod Steiger & Liberace—
Jonathan Winters & Tab Hunter

Robert Morse & John Gielgud—
Milton Berle  & Robert Morley

Dana Andrews & James Coburn—
Roddy McDowell & Margaret Leighton

My film script by Terry Southern—
Plus Miss Christopher Isherwood

I was Miss Thing hoofing it up out—
There on the Rigor Mortis Range

Such tacky Midwestern Film Noir—
Such Drearie Dreary Scenery

Miss Thing was simply appalled—
When I looked in the fucking mirror

I was simply appalled, my dear—
By the tacky Thanatos I saw there

The Dead are already Dead, honey—
They just don’t know it that’s all 

THE STRAND THEATER

The Granada Theater renovation—
Was such a Stunning Success that

The dumpy old Strand Theater—
Down the street opened up again!!!

It wasn’t a High Class Joint—
A Fancy Artistic Film Palace Thing 

Just a cheap Double Feature Dump—
Appealing to Trailer Trash like me

It still had this filthy bathroom down—
There in the dark dirty basement

The local Ghost Busters said—
That the Tea Room was definitely

Haunted by some old Spooks—
Queens hanging around down there

Homo Homesteader spirits still—
Stalking the Saturday Matinees

Cruising all that young bored—
Kansas cock that needed a Blow

It was simply scandalous, dears—
Like Bingo Parlor Nights when

All the little shocked church ladies—
Heard moanings & groanings

Coming up outta the darkness—
Those evil odious lucrative latrines!!!

The Balcony was haunted too—
All those Ghastly Sat Matinees

The Rowdy Youth of Emporia—
The Baby Boomer Teen Creeps

Later becoming the awful—
Snake Pit Drive In Delinquents

"I Was a Teenage Werewolf"—
"Creatures from the Black Lagoon"